Sunday, Dec. 22, 2013 KSFR, Santa Fe, N.M. 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell Webcasting! 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Let it Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Suddenly It's Christmas by Loudon Wainwright III
Beaver Fever by The Brain Eaters
Gravedigger by Billy Joe Winghead
Some Velvet Morning by The Frontier Circus
Oblivian by The Oblivians
White Light/White Heat by Lou Reed
Christmas Out of Sight (Wonder) by New Mystery Girl
Gloria by Elastica
The Witch by Los Peyotes
Sing This Song of Joy by Mudhoney
Santa Won't You Please Bring Me Some Beer by The Mojo Gurus
Crazy For You by La La Brooks
Milwaukee's Beast by Slab City
Let's Snap by The Mobbs
Hey Santa Claus by The Moonglows
Paralyze Ya by Left Lane Cruiser
Why You Leave Me by T. Valentine & Daddy Long Legs
Six Bullets for Christmas by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
Sand Surfin' by The Four Dimensions
Border Town Blues by Long John Hunter
Don't Need You No More by The Outer Limits
When You Were Mine by. The Morfomen
El Vampiro by Los Vampiranos
Love's Made a Fool of You by The Bobby Fuller Four
BC Clark's Anniversary Sale
We Got the Eggnog if You Got the Whiskey by Hickoids
Jinglecide by The Rockin' Guys
Father Christmas is Dressed in Green by Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians of the British Empire
I Was on the Bozo Show by Nobunny
Stick a Fork in It by Lovestruck
Daddy's Gone toBed by Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
Chokin' Kind by Z.Z. Hill
The Season 's Upon Us by Dropkick Murphys
Santa Doesn't Cop Out on Dope by Sonic Youth
That Feel by Ze'ev Tene
Lucky Day by Tom Waits
Substitute CLOSING THEME: Oh Holy Night by Brian Wilson
Friday, Dec. 20, 2013 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting!
10 p.m. to midnight Fridays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
email me during the show! terrel(at)ksfr.org
OPENING THEME: Buckaroo by Buck Owens & The Buckaroos How You Want It Done by Big Bill
They Call Me Country by DM Bob & The Deficits
I Guess I'm Crazy For Loving You by Werly Fairburn
Polk Salad Annie by Jason & The Scorchers
Ole Rattler by Long John Hunter
The Crawdad Song by The Meat Purveyors
Moonshine Still by Jack Holt
Live Fast, love Hard, Die Young by Faron Young
Hard Rain's Gonna Fall by Paul Burch & The Waco Brothers
Liquored Up by Southern Culture on the Skids
Closing Time / Take a Letter Maria by The Pleasure Barons
Hawkeye Jordan by Jimbo Mathis
Songs We Used to Sing by Possessed by Paul James
Ain't That a Mess by Al Miller & His Swing Stompers
Making Believe by Social Distortion
Everybody's Sweetheart by Art Gibson & His Mountain Melody Boys
Bright Lights and Blonde Haired Women / There's No Fool Like a Young Fool by Ray Price
I Hung It Up by Junior Brown
Something's Gonna Get Us All by Earl Poole Ball
Merry Christmas From the Family by Robert Earl Keen
Christmas in Southgate by Ry Cooder
Lonesome Road Blues by Ernest Stoneman
Old Flames Can't Hold a Candle to You by Sally Timms
Rose of the Summer by Robbie Fulks
Wildebeest by The Handsome Family
The Christians and the Pagans by Dar Williams
Someday by Blaze Foley
Old Toy Trains by Roger Miller
CLOSING THEME: Comin' Down by The Meat Puppets
A version of this was published in The Santa Fe New Mexican Dec. 20 , 2013 UPDATED 12-23-13 (Check below the videos) Two recent compilations from Norton Records hit close to home. Well, two or three hundred miles or so from home. El Vampiro, which is all instrumental surf rock from 1963 and 1964, and Sand Surfin’, which includes surf music as well as garage-band snot-rock from the mid-1960s, are the latest entries in Norton’s El Paso Rock series (Volumes 8 and 9, respectively).
The name of this series isn’t quite accurate. These “El Paso” albums include several New Mexico bands as well as labels and recording studios from our enchanted land. Indeed, these impressive collections provide a great introduction to the rock ’n’ roll side of three influential southern New Mexico record labels operated by giants of New Mexico’s musical history.
Let’s start off with Goldust Records of Las Cruces, which was owned and operated by Emmit Brooks, who still runs the Goldust recording studio, releasing more than 100 singles in its day. A 2011 profile in the Las Cruces Sun News noted that Brooks is a country musician himself, playing bass and singing with a touring band called The Aggie Ramblers from 1957 to 1975. Before he opened the studio, Brooks recorded an original country song called “Peach Blossoms” at Petty Studios in Clovis (most famous for recording the lion’s share of Buddy Holly’s hits).
Goldust was the home of a Las Cruces band called The Four Dimensions, which provides the title song of Sand Surfin’. It’s about the joys of riding plywood planks down the gypsum dunes of White Sands National Monument: “Down in the wastelands of New Mexico/Where there’s a definite lack of H2O/The kids get their kicks in this barren land/When they go surfin’ on pure white sand.”
In an interview for the website Garage Hangover a few years ago, Dimension Jack Starkey recalled his Goldust days. “We had a great relationship with Emmit, and he shared in the cost and profit of the record (I don’t think there was any profit). We backed other performers at the studio also.”
Goldust is also the label that released “Don’t Need You No More” by The Outer Limits, also on Sand Surfin’. The liner notes say the (unidentified) lead singer was frequently compared to Roky Erickson. I don’t hear 13th Floor Elevators in the song so much as I hear the melancholy folk rock of The Beau Brummels (“Laugh Laugh,” “Just a Little”). Though not included on the Norton compilations, Santa Fe’s Morfomen also recorded at least a couple of tracks for Goldust in the ’60s.
Starkey, in that Garage Hangover interview, also talks about hanging out with other Las Cruces and El Paso rockers of the day at The Lobby in Juárez, where he watched and undoubtedly picked up licks and tricks from bluesman Long John Hunter, who recorded with Yucca Records of Alamogordo.
A couple of years ago, Norton Records acquired Yucca’s entire catalog, including music that never saw the light of day. Nortonville’s blog describes Yucca as “a star in Norton’s ever growing constellation of able labels. Yucca’s output in the 1950’s and 1960’s is equaled by the number of world-class recordings that sat in the can for fifty years.”
It was headed by the late Calvin Boles, who, like Emmit Brooks, was a country musician. With a voice like Ernest Tubbs’, he played in a band called The Rocket City Playboys. Yucca recorded some great rock, country, and blues sounds in the 1950s and ’60s.
The best-known artist to record with Yucca was an El Paso singer named Bobby Fuller, who released two singles on the label in 1962. Not long afterward, Fuller would hit it big with “I Fought the Law.” Fuller’s music makes up the first three volumes in the El Paso Rock series.
Among Yucca’s classics is a politically incorrect 1961 rockabilly single by Big Lloyd Dalton & The El Paso Trail Blazers called “Thees Plane Ees Mine.” It was inspired by Antulio Ramirez Ortiz’s hijacking of a National Airlines flight to Cuba that year, eight years or so before hijacking planes to Cuba became a national plague. Unfortunately Dalton’s song hasn’t yet been reissued by Norton. I hope they rectify that situation.
El Vampiro has five tracks, some previously unreleased, from Yucca by The Monarcs, featuring guitarist Tim Taylor. The best Monarcs song is the slow, eerie, whammy-bar heavy “Forever Lost.”
The other Yucca acts represented on these recent El Paso Rock compilations are: Steve Cooper & The Avantis, whose stinging 1966 instrumental “Sky Diver” is on Sand Surfin’; Las Cruces guitarist Chuck Sledge, who has three previously unissued instrumentals, including his version of “La Bamba,” on El Vampiro; The Pitiful Panics, whose low and slow “Why I Cry” on Sand Surfin’ is as full of teenage yearning as the title suggests; and The Fortunes, an Alamogordo band whose “Chi-Wa-Wa,” which is on El Vampiro, was a favorite of the late Steve Crosno, a DJ on the popular KELP station in El Paso (a religious station these days). Crosno used it as the background music leading up to the news breaks during his show.
Crosno was perhaps El Paso’s major go-to rock ’n’ roll figure of the ’60s. In addition to his radio show, he had an American Bandstand-like TV show in El Paso and promoted concerts in the area. And he’s also responsible for the third New Mexico label and studio to be featured on these albums, the slightly more obscure Frogdeath Records. Yes, decades before New Mexico had Frogville Records, it had Frogdeath Records.
Crosno, who died of cancer in 2006, operated Frogdeath out of his home in University Park (part of the Las Cruces area). Crosno’s goofy sense of humor was apparent in Frogdeath’s logo. It was a parody of RCA-Victor’s logo — Nipper the dog listening to “his master’s voice” on a Victrola. Frogdeath had a frog instead of a dog. And right above the poor creature’s head was a boot, apparently ready to stomp.
Sand Surfin’ includes the first Frogdeath single, “Wipe In” by The Imposters. This is basically a parody of The Surfaris’ hit “Wipe Out,” down to the crazy laugh that opens that record. (There’s another song on this album, “Bogus” by The Scavengers, which sounds like a slowed-down version of “Wipe Out.”)
Also on Sand Surfin’ is the instrumental “Mr. Big” by The Four Frogs. According to the liner notes of the album, one of the Four Frogs, Colin Flannigan, also has a song here — “You Came to Me,” a Beatles-ish rocker he recorded for a different label, Suemi, under the pseudonym Dave Caflan. Frogdeath also released “When Will I Find Her,” a fuzzy garage rocker by Mike Renolds (real name Reynolds) backed by The Infants of Soul.
And while its records weren’t released on Frogdeath, a Las Cruces band called The Key Men was produced by Crosno. The group’s instrumentals “Sun-Burstin’” and “Up to News” are on El Vampiro.
Southern New Mexico and El Paso are very rarely, if indeed ever, mentioned as major rock ’n’ roll meccas of the ’60s. But these compilations show that this area was bursting with crazy energy back in those daysin those days.
Here's some songs from those three New Mexico labels. There are some more Youtubes from Yucca Records on this old blog post.
UPDATE 12-23-13 Santa Fe musician Flash Swank sent me this anecdote after reading this column. I'm copying it here with his permission.
Sometime around 11 years ago I was working on a small job in Alamogordo. My rental car had a CD player, and I was coincidentally listening to Long John Hunter on what I believe was one of the early Norton records “El Paso Rock” series. I had recently been exposed to Long John by seeing him at one of the free blues shows at the recently built Camel Rock Casino, and had purchased the CD after seeing a review in Vintage Guitar magazine.
One night I remembered that the tunes I was listening to were recorded in Alamogordo, and I reread the excellent liner notes on the Norton release. When I got back to the motel, I got out the phone book to see if Calvin Boles was still listed there. He was. I spent some time wondering if he would welcome a cold call from someone he had never met. His wife answered, and put Calvin on the line.
I opened with an apology for bothering him, but it turned out that he loved getting the call. He was in declining health and on dialysis, but loved talking about Yucca Records and the old days. He really got energized talking about music. When we were saying goodbye, he said he was going to warm up the garage and write some songs.
Two members of the punk band Pussy Riot jailed in the Soviet Union, uh, I mean Russia, will be freed under an amnesty plan that includes the release of 30 environmental activists, jolly old Russian President Vladimir Putin said Thursday.
Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, 24, and Maria Alyokhina, 25, are serving a two-year sentences for their "punk prayer" in Moscow's main cathedral last year.
A third Pussy Rioter who was convicted for the protest, Yekaterina Samutsevich, was released on appeal last year.
"I feel sorry for Pussy Riot not for the fact that they were jailed, but for disgraceful behavior that has degraded the image of women,” Putin said during his annual televised news conference.
There's no truth to the rumor that the Pussy Riot members were released as a part of a prisoner exchange program involving the U.S. instrumental band Los Straitjackets.
To celebrate their release, here's some Pussy Riot. The song is called "Putin Lights Up the Fires."
Merry Christmas, my dear young friends! Once again the Big Enchilada is going to rock your stockings off. Roll your Yule logs and hang your little balls on the tree. The War on Christmas never sounded so good.
(Background Music: O Christmas Tree by Brave Combo)
Beatnik's Wish by Patsy Ray & The Beatniks
We Got the Eggnog If You Got the Whiskey by Hickoids
Jail by The Rockin' Guys
Father Christmas is Dressed in Green by Wild Billy Childish & The Musicians of The British Empire
Nothin' But Tears Under My Christmas Tree by Thee Fine Lines
I Wanna Spend Christmas with Elvis by Marlene Paul
Hey Santa Claus by The Moonglows
(Background Music: Deck the Halls by The Klezmonauts)
Groovy Christmas and New Year by Kojo Donkoh & Pee Pee Dynamite
My Mom and Santa (Twistin') by George Jones
I Still Believe in Christmas by The Fleshtones
Poncho Claus by El Vez
Christmas Cheer by Angry Johnny & The Killbillies
The Season's Upon Us by Dropkick Murphys
(Background Music: Jingle Bells by Gene Krupa & Charlie Ventura )
Sunday, Dec. 22, 2013 
